In 1700 Livinus Lanckrock tended vines in Ghent. His great-great-great-grandson Pierre was handed Belgium’s national basilica by King Leopold II, who came and laid the first stone himself on 12 October 1905. Pierre drew a cathedral bristling with towers — six of them, or seven; the record can’t agree — the tallest standing 146 metres above the crossing. It was never built. His foundations are still under the basilica at Koekelberg.
This is the documented line: 412 people, read directly from Paul Langerock’s parish-register research. Where he wasn’t certain, the drawing isn’t either.
And underneath it, the line nobody wrote down. 319 Y-DNA markers, from one swab — reaching 4,700 years back, to a branch that fewer than 4% of European men on this haplogroup carry. The paper is 326 years deep. The body is fourteen times older.